Scherk-Collins Sculpture Generator

Some of Brent Collins' recent wood sculptures can be
understood geometrically as rings of saddle surfaces resulting
from a toroidal warping of a truncated Scherk minimal surface.

A computer program has been developed to visualize different
configurations of such saddle rings with different number of
holes and different amounts of twists. Experimenting with
different values for the parameters of such a virtual sculpture
can be done at interactive speeds and can save weeks of hard
labor needed to build physical prototypes. It also may result in
more optimized solutions, and it allows to find configurations
that one would not likely dare to explore if the prototypes had
to be built manually from physical matter.

An intellectual collaboration with Brent Collins has already
resulted in a couple of intriguing new wood sculptures. A direct
collaboration on more complex sculptures is now under way since
the prototyping program has recently been enhanced to deliver
construction blueprints in the form of slices through the
sculpture geometry.

Here are two recent sculptures by Brent
Collins photographed by Phillip Geller: followed by a
simulation with our sculpture generator:

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These sculptures can be understood as a toroidal warp of
Scherk's 2nd minimal surface, possibly with an overall twist:

. _

_ An early sculpture by Brent Collins had a similar structure,
but used 3rd-order saddles (above).

And here is an entirely "virtual" sculpture with 5 stacked
stories of monkey saddles, created by Séquin's generator:

Here again is the above 7-hole sculpture, but now with 450
degrees of twist:

An 8-storey Scherk tower warped into a toroid with 180 degrees
of twist:

And a more complex structure using 5th order saddles presented
in cross-eye stereo:

If you would like to play with "Sculpture Generator 1" ...
Please note: This is not a supported turn-key system!
But you can experiment with it, if you have a WINDOWS system.
Go to: http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~sequin/GEN/
and download: SculptGen.zip
then run: generator.exe
in the bin directory.

PS:
If you create something beautiful and decide to show/publish/sell
your results,
you should provide a reference to the program:
"Generated by 'Sculpture Generator 1' by Carlo H. Séquin, UC
Berkeley"